Allowing the Holy Spirit to pray for you

I tend to pray passionately. When I go into a prayer it's like, if it's not passionate then why do it. I also consciously, when I have to which is often, note to myself that I am going against my fallen nature in this prayer. Whatever I am praying about. Because my fallen nature doesn't want to pray about anything, and my fallen nature is making me think I am being fake in my desire for something (usually regarding a petition for someone else), so I just acknowledge that fact and *go against it.*

At the foundational level prayer is an act of recognizing something higher than 'you.' And when you recognize something higher than you (something that is real, and what created you is real) it is a knife into the fake being of our Old Man fallen nature made up of, among other things, vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will. When we pray to what is higher than us we are directly taking on the internal tyranny of our inner 'Old Man' (our old Adamic fallen nature). So simply recognizing that is a sound tactic. Yeah, I know you're there, Old Man, accusing me, making me feel embarrassed, making me wonder if I really care about this person I am about to say a prayer for. I understand, and I recongize it and I will go over and above you and pray anyway.

Then I find that when I am in the midst of a prayer that it often takes on a life of its own. I believe this is what it means to allow the Holy Spirit to pray for you. I start out to say something specific, and I may even say it, yet I am inspired then to go further and at times what I then actually pray is something different than what I had planned on praying.

God is the first cause of all things that come about. Yet He also acts by secondary causes, and for us being a secondary cause, the result of that cause, can be free, contingent, or necessary. I think of prayer as being in the free or contingent categories. I.e. God answers prayers (wow, I am lost in this paragraph... I'll be honest and not delete it or edit it and just try to find my way out of it making at least some degree of sense...) Here is where it went wrong: "Yet He also acts by secondary causes, and for us being a secondary cause, the result of that cause, can be free, contingent, or necessary." That was somebody on mushrooms staring at the wallpaper.

If my prayer is a secondary cause of some desired end it may be *contingent* on something else happening I have no control of. Yet my prayer is needed nevertheless in that chain of a contingent secondary cause. Thus I pray in faith.

If my prayer is a secondary cause of some desired end it may not be contingent on anything else but just may be effective because I as a believer prayed it and God says He will answer prayers. This is an example of how *effort* has meaning. It's in the free category, but *somebody* has got to say the prayer, in other words. This goes for other actions as well. Effort has meaning, in this sense, because we are secondary causes in all that needs to get done.

If something is necessary then God *gets it done* despite the effort of his elect or anyone else.

(And of course by saying that because of secondary causes 'effort has meaning' that is a response to those who ignorantly think that the fact of God being sovereign in creation, providence, and grace means a 'deterministic' universe, or some equivalent of Islamic notions of fate - Kismet - where you believe hey, just sit in the sand and do nothing because it all happens as God will have it happen anyway. No, that's not how God has set things up. That would only follow for *necessary* secondary causes.)

Well, anyway, I wanted to show how prayer is effective even when we can't see how it could be.

I also make a central request in all my prayers that the Holy Spirit be sent into the heart of the person in question. For instance, if you are praying the person be healed of something fine, but then I request the ultimate: that the Holy Spirit be sent into their heart.

I recently prayed for an atheist who was sick, and as I was struggling with the usual thoughts about praying for healing and how it is usually not answered (in any obvious way) I then began to pray that the Holy Spirit be sent into this person's heart.